In the end, there were three Staples High School students sharing essays that grappled with the topic of white privilege.

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When the topic was first announced, the fourth annual installment of TEAM Westport’s Teen Diversity Essay Contest drew an unprecedented amount of backlash in the form of hate-filled emails and phone calls. The blowback was received in the days and weeks after a Jan. 31 Associated Press story ran on the essay topic, creating an international news frenzy.

But when the time came for the winning essayists to be announced and read their thoughts, they were supported and encouraged by overwhelming admiration and applause by their fellow Westporters Monday night.

“I saw what was happening and I, personally, really didn’t want to write the essay,” said 15-year-old Chet Ellis.

Ellis’ parents, who moved the family from Manhattan to Westport when he was in the fifth grade, encouraged him to participate, however.

“My parents really pushed me to write it and they really, really forced me to get it out,” said Ellis, who is black. “And once I got it out, I couldn’t stop going.”

His parents’ urging paid off and Ellis took home first place for his essay “The Colors of Privilege.”

In his winning essay, Ellis wrote he “never really thought much about white privilege” until his family left New York City.

While his classmates are aware of the plight African-Americans have endured and continue to encounter, Ellis said they do not see that struggle in Westport.

“Students get blinded by the thought that a student could get into college more easily because of their skin color, while not seeing that African-Americans are twice as likely to be unemployed, and once employed earn nearly 25 percent less than their white counterparts,” the Staples High School sophomore wrote. “They don’t see that despite making up 12 percent of the population, we are 35 percent of jail inmates and 24 percent of people shot by the police.”

Ellis went on to explain the implicit bias he faces, even at his local Walgreens.

“But living in this place where almost everyone is white makes me question, when I’m in Walgreens and the manager follows me around the store, would this happen if I looked different?” he wrote.

Town government employees from the town clerk to the first selectman’s office received unsettling reactions from across the country. The Occidental Observer, a white nationalist website, called TEAM Westport a “Case Study in anti-White Activism.”

Harold Bailey, Jr., the chair of TEAM Westport, said in a February interview the topic of white privilege had been vetted with other members of the essay committee, local teachers and congregation leaders. It originated with the idea of implicit bias that came up during the 2016 presidential election, “the things that you don’t have worry about when you’re a certain race,” Bailey said, adding that implicit bias was another term for white privilege.

Bailey, who attended high school in the South during the 1960s, is no stranger to the dark side of race relations.

Although he now lives in Westport, Bailey went to school in Knoxville, Tenn. when white privilege was law. One of 20 black students selected in 1963 to be the first sizable class to integrate into Fulton High School, Bailey, was bombarded daily with racial slurs, physical violence and threats of death. That year around one percent of black children in the South attended school with white children, according to ProPublica.

On Monday, Bailey commended Ellis, along with his fellow students, for their powerful essays.

Citing the range of responses from praise to vitriol surrounding the essay topic Bailey said, “It’s clearly an indicator that this is the kind of subject that needs to be discussed if we’re ever going to get any resolution to our relationships here in this country. And so I really applaud the three of them and I think we should give them all a hand.”

Westport’s first selectman, Jim Marpe, also spoke about the importance of addressing difficult topics head on.

“Westport has a long tradition of its residents engaging in open public discourse on difficult topics,” said Marpe, who is white. “We regularly and passionately debate and defend points of view on challenging and sometimes uncomfortable topics, but we do so in a civilized and respectful manner.”

“Unfortunately, some outside of our community chose to offer commentary related to this contest that has no place in civil discourse any place or anytime,” added Marpe.

“Westport will continue to encourage and support open dialogue on difficult topics and issues conducted in a civil, respectful and thoughtful manner.”

Civility and respect were evident on Monday, as the winning students read aloud their essays to applause from the community members gathered at the Westport Library.

Josiah Tarrant, a white 16-year-old, told the story of his family bringing home his adopted, younger brother from Ethiopia. Tarrant acknowledged the white privilege he has experienced in his life and challenges those who maintain that white privilege is a “liberal tactic that creates white guilt” to think further.

“I say explain to me the racial gaps in our country’s education, healthcare, employment, wealth and incarceration. I invite you to sit down and assure me when my brother is a teen out in the world, he can walk with his black friends freely down Main Street as I did, and that clerks and customers alike will look upon him as the great future promise of Westport as they did on me,” wrote Tarrant, a junior at Staples.

Tarrant’s essay “White Privilege and Me” earned him second place, while third place went to Claire Dinshaw, an 18-year-old Staples senior who is white.

Her piece “The Privilege of Ignorance,” explored disparities non-white students in Westport face.

“Whereas I can find skin care products easily, non-white Westport residents will find that stores mostly carry beauty products designed for white skin; whereas I can turn on the news to find countless white role models, non-white Westport residents will find that the majority of politicians, anchors, and corporate leaders resemble their white classmates,” the 18-year-old wrote.

For their work, all three students earned prize money thanks to private contributions made to TEAM Westport. Dinshaw took home $500, Tarrant got $750 and Ellis won $1,000 for his first-place essay.